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Tropical cyclones impact estuaries via a variety of mechanisms including storm surge, flooding from precipitation, high winds, and strong wave action. Prior studies have documented disturbances caused by tropical cyclones, including prolonged periods of depressed salinity from high freshwater discharge and increased or decreased dissolved oxygen concentrations from increased loading of organic matter and/or nutrients. However, most studies of disturbance and recovery in estuaries have been limited to one or a few locations or storm events, limiting generalizations about tropical cyclone impacts and characteristic patterns of ecosystem response and recovery. We analyzed responses to 59 tropical cyclones across 19 estuaries in the eastern United States by applying a new method for detecting disturbance and recovery to long-term and high-frequency measurements of salinity and dissolved oxygen from NOAA’s National Estuarine Research Reserve System. We quantified disturbance occurrence, timing, recovery time, and severity. Salinity disturbances generally started earlier and lasted longer than dissolved oxygen disturbances. Estuaries usually recovered within days, but some disturbances lasted weeks or months. Recovery time was positively correlated with disturbance severity for both variables. Tropical cyclone properties (especially precipitation) and location characteristics were both related to disturbance characteristics. Our findings demonstrate the power of high-frequency, long-term, and cross-system data, when combined with appropriate statistical methods, for analyzing hurricanes across many estuaries to quantify disturbances. Estuaries are resilient to hurricanes for the variables and time periods considered. However, persistent impacts can potentially damage resources provided by estuaries, eroding future resilience if hurricanes become more frequent and severe.
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This content will become publicly available on August 1, 2026
Mitigating climate shocks requires understanding local perceptions: Long-term benefits of regional hurricanes outweigh short-term damages for traditional ranchers in Baja California Sur
Tropical cyclones (e.g., hurricanes and tropical storms), are considered one of the world's most destructive climatological forces, causing substantial damage especially in urban areas. However, for some arid ecosystems, tropical cyclones represent natural disturbance events, providing important sources of fresh water that support ecosystem functioning. For subsistence populations living in these regions, it is unclear whether they experience these events negatively due to the associated damages or positively within a predictable disturbance regime. Here, we assess these phenomena with traditional ranchers from Baja California Sur, Mexico, following Hurricane Kay (September 2022). We find that despite significant damage caused by the hurricane, nearly the entire sample perceived this tropical cyclone event as a net positive on their lives. This traditional ranching population has a culture that is adapted to the seasonal tropical cyclone disturbance regime, and expects extreme rain events annually to support ecosystem functioning, and therefore their economic livelihoods. To these ranchers, the climate shock is not when the hurricanes come, but rather, when hurricanes do not come. We situate our results within a disturbance ecology framework, highlighting the role of increasing aridity and probability of drought in the North American Arid West.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2246385
- PAR ID:
- 10600869
- Publisher / Repository:
- Elsevier
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Arid Environments
- Volume:
- 229
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 0140-1963
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 105408
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Climate change Tropical cyclones Baja California peninsula Pastoralists Drought
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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